Who Gave Us the Right to Remake the World?

U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so.

In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad.

The NDI has been tied to color-coded or Orange revolutions such as those that dethroned regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Lebanon. The project miscarried in Belarus.

The NDI is one of several agencies, dating to the 1980s, that were set up to subvert communist regimes. With the end of the Cold War, however, these agencies were not decommissioned, but recommissioned to serve as something of an American Comintern.

Where the old Comintern of Lenin sought to instigate communist revolutions across the West and its empires, post-Cold War America decided to promote democratic revolutions to remake the world in the image of late 20th century America.

In 2002, McFaul wrote a book: Russia’s Unfinished Revolution.

Vladimir Putin’s men are not unreasonably asking if he was sent to Moscow to finish that revolution. Putin has already accused Hillary Clinton of flashing the signal for street demonstrations to begin — to protest Russia’s December’s elections.

Nor is it surprising the Putin’s people are suspicious of McFaul, who added to his problems by meeting with anti-Putin dissidents the day after he presented his credentials.

McFaul says this is part of his “dual-track engagement” with Russian society. Before leaving for Moscow, he told NPR’s “Morning Edition”: “We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.”

But what, exactly, are these “universal values”?

And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

After all, we do not even agree ourselves on what is moral and immoral, good and evil. Indeed, our own deep disagreements on what is moral and what is not are at the root of the culture wars tearing this country apart.

In America, women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Scores of millions have availed themselves of that right since Roe v. Wade. Yet traditionalists of many faiths — Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Orthodox and Jewish — reject any such woman’s right and regard it as a moral abomination.

Do homosexuals have a right to cohabit, form civil unions and marry?

In a few American states, yes; in others, no. But try to impose those values on nations of the Muslim and Third Worlds, where homosexuality is a moral outrage and even a capital offense, and our ambassadors will find themselves in physical peril.

Does McFaul believe democracy is a universally superior system of government? Yet our own founding fathers detested one-man, one-vote democracy. Democracy does not even get a mention in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers.

The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, believed society should be ruled by a “natural aristocracy” of “virtue and talent.”

If the promotion of democracy is a mission of our diplomats, are we to subvert the monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia?

When we see how democracy empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, does it even make sense to insist that it be embraced by nations where the populations are pervasively anti-American?

What is the universally right stand on capital punishment — the Rick Perry position in Texas or the Andrew Cuomo position in New York?

In the United States, all religions — Santeria, Wicca, Islam, Christianity — are to be treated equally and all kept out of the public square and the pubic schools. In a Muslim world that contains a fifth of mankind, Islam is the one true faith. Rival faiths have few or no rights.

Are we going to push the Islamic world to treat all religions equally?

We celebrate religious, racial and ethnic diversity. The Chinese, who persecute Uighurs, Tibetans, Christians and Falun Gong, detest that diversity and fear it will tear their country apart.

We believe in freedom of speech and the press.

Yet, in France, if you deny the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915, you are guilty of a crime, while in Turkey if you affirm that the Turks committed genocide, you have committed a crime. Should U.S. diplomats battle for repeal of both laws? Or mind our own business?

If America wishes to lead the world, let us do it by example, as we once did, not by hectoring every nation on earth to adopt the American way, which as of now, does not seem to be working all that well for Americans.

McFaul should stick to his diplomatic duties.

Jefferson had it right, “We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country.”

Tom S: America DID refrain from hectoring the Soviet Union throughout the “cold war.” It is only now, when Russia is a Democracy, that the US is hectoring her, demanding a return to communism, in fact.

Excellent article Pat. The old adage that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” applies here.A good example of our “democratic institutions” is the idea of free ,open and democratic elections. These elections are free and democratic as long as a Republican or Democrat runs. See how free and open these elections are when a 3rd party or independent candidate tries to get on the ballot in most States. And are all the ballots counted correctly? How many elections have been stolen over the years? Hanging chads,lost ballots,results changed etc.etc. Basically we have a very corrupt system. Not just here and there but widespread. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a nation of laws but a nation of powerful men who want to keep and expand their power. In essence, we have become a nation of hypocrites who should mind their own business and clean up their own act.

Ah, but this is not the Cold War. Comparing modern Russia to the old Soviet Union or these days to those days is ridiculous. The Soviet government was viciously repressive to its own people (which Putin, though certainly autocratic, is not), and the Communist world was aggressively expansionistic (which modern Russia is not. Even the Muslim world, in practice, has not been for centuries – name a Christian country invaded and occupied by Muslims since the Industrial Revolution). The Soviet Union had huge armies in occupied eastern Europe poised to invade western Europe (or to brutally put down any dissent in those occupied countries) on a moment’s notice. These are long gone. The threat of mutual nuclear annihilation on 30 minutes’ notice is also gone.

The point to all this is that Communism was exceptionally evil. Putin is not. What the Soviets did affected us directly and posed real dangers to our country. What happens in modern Russia does not. The Cold War was an extraordinary time and we had to take extraordinary measures to get through it. Now we do not. In times of crisis, you do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily think it wise or necessary to do, and take risks you wouldn’t ordinarily take. When the crisis passes, you stop doing those things if you’re not a damn fool.

Reading through Pat’s description of America as it is, I wondered “who indeed?”

We seem to lack both the right and the wisdom necessary for the task. When I seek advice, I normally avoid asking people who aren’t in control of their finances what they think. Why would it matter? What good would it do to know? I understand that misfortune can strike the virtuous and the wise, but if someone fails to face the reality that’s written in black and white on their bank statements for an entire generation, I’m less than enthusiastic to hear how they’d solve real or perceived problems within my reality.

Well Pat, it didn’t help when, for instance, your old boss Ronald Reagan kept talking about America as some “shining city on a hill.”

Nor did it help with all the hyper-patriotic American exceptionalism talk we’ve seen politicians of the Right spouting for decades now; very very often for their own self-interested reasons that we never called them on.

Nor did it help when the Republicans went bottom-fishing with their flag-waving amongst the Evangelicals (which again Michael Dougherty has called *the* Republican coalition now) leading, for example, to the kind of sentiment expressed right here on this site just a few days ago in an earlier thread by an Evangelical stating expressly that the U.S. is the *only* good country on earth.

In fact, Pat, it seems to me in very large measure the problem stemmed from the incredibly stupid actions of another of your old bosses, Mr. Nixon, in making the Vietnam War a Republican war essentially. Naturally, and understandably, there was a reaction against what clearly was an anti-patriotic element in the anti-war crowd. But what Nixon did, quite cleverly and effectively, was to try to cover his stupidity in adopting that war by essentially defending it—and whacking the Dems at the same time—by essentially saying that “patriotism” was indeed the central political struggle that existed in the U.S.

And my God did it work. So much so that very soon He Himself was found to be on the Republican side. He after all rather obviously built the hill so we could shine upon it, no? And well of course for those not given to much politico-economic history thinking or etc. the question *obviously* involved The Almighty:

Who, after all, *were* the ultimate *anti*-patriots and what distinguished Them from US? Well, how could it have been anything *but* those godless commies … and all their godlessness.

So does anyone really dispute but that these sorts of things form a kind of path of intellectual stepping-stones to what we’re seeing today on the Right? To … John McCainism? To Lindsey Grahamism?

To George Bushism, with him being so hilariously bloody stupid that he couldn’t even *avoid* using the term “crusade” to describe what he was about with all his talk of “promoting democracy” all ’round the world?

So hey Pat, here’s the answer who gave at least the Right today who believe in same the obligation to go remaking the world: It’s God of course.

(And if anyone should need more evidence, go reading the Resolution *just* passed the other day by the RNC in New Orleans stating—as incredible as it may seem—that we should support Israel because … you guessed it … “God” supports it too, and gave them all the land they are sitting on it, and (this kills me) “Whereas God has never rescinded said grant of land….”)

It’s God God God, Pat, so as a good Catholic before going looking at the motes in others eyes you might want to consider if there wasn’t a splinter or two in yours and your past bosses. And whether it isn’t time to totally reconsider shackling conservatism to religion.

Mr. Buchanan is spot on. “Exceptionalism” is something only granted by God, through grace; so prime virtue, it is nothing which can be pompously self-assigned. Self-admiration is something of a delusion, even if it is wrapped in pretty red, white and blue shopping paper. The problem with the human condition is that, given half the chance of promoting self-interest and survival, we’re all inclined to be rascals.

I believe virtue is taught to children best through example, and not by screeching harangues or by whippings. Resort to the latter educational strategies, is the method of the neighborhood bully-boy. If the insecure, “I want my way, or no way” governing elites of this country imagine that the bully-boys of this world’s playground can be or are very much loved, they are in for a rude shock, and a jolting ride.

A military empire just will not voluntarily cease. It seems all but impossible to even shrink a little.
Also, to lecture other countries to honor “human rights” as we here pass the “patriot act”, NDAA and look to pass SOPA and PIPA and use the TSA to seach every citizen everywhere, is simply preposterous.
Since George H.W. Bush, including, Clinton, George W. Bush and now B.H. Obama, the country is rushing into some brand of totalitarianism.

This universalism ultimately comes, of course, from Christianity, as does the very concept of human rights and much more that today we take for granted. But this universalism is to take the form of the Social Reign of Christ the King (as explained by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Quas Primas) , a doctrine which has been subverted by the six waves of the Revolution: 1) the Pseudo-Reformation (Protestantism), 2) the Pseudo-Enlightenment, 3) Romanticism, 4) Communism 5) Progressivism, and 6) the disaster of Vatican II.

Without the true universalism of the Social Reign of Christ the King, in other words, what we’ve seen are substitutes for it, predictably attended by all of the distortions and horror that lies bring with them.

“You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.”

McFaul has been a proponent of the “reset” of relations between the US and Russia, which obviously is a good thing. Sadly, the armaments manufacturers and the Israel lobby keep pressing for the missile defence shield, and undermine America’s relationship with Russia.

We are witnessing a shift from the protestant notion of Christ as personal savior assisting the individual soul through his grace in a personal transformation; to the more Calvinist theology of American exceptionalism : America as “divine plan” laid out by the sovereign God not only for our own country but for the entire world. (and what is probably blasphemous –even for God Himself.)

“We see further into the future, we are the indispensable nation, etc.

Perhaps it is true the Democrats have rejected God and his commandments in their entirety, opting instead for faith in “brother man”and “sister woman” all naked and alone; while the GOP simply worships the false gods of avarice and war. Afterall, isn’t it really all about the economy, stupids?

Either way, this current state of affairs, perhaps more than any other, is why we should once again begin to mind our own business, quit searching abroad for monsters to destroy and try to create a little slice of heaven right here in “God’s country.”

Carlist and Nergol, Please note that I was responding to a breathtakingly ignorant post when I was citing examples of the US hectoring of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Personally, hectoring other countries is something we do a lot of, and other countries do it to us. It’s no big whoop to me. When such hectoring is accompanied by policies to reinforce it, then it becomes open do discussion, debate, and criticism. FWIW, I would much rather live in this this country with its freedoms and contradictions than in what Russia is becoming.

1. @Buchanan,
I really must protest every time I read a paleocon denunciation of American foreign policy because it is “seeking to impose democracy on the rest of the world”. Of course, it is doing nothing of the sort, regardless of the argument as to whether democracy, republicanism, dictatorship, corporate state, or whatever is a superior form of political organisation. American foreign policy serves the economic interests of those who own the American State and nothing else. If overthrowing a regime is in order, it will talk up democracy, if backing it is in order, it will stay silent (e.g., Bahrain/Qatar/UAE/Saudi – all far less democratic than Russia or Iran).
At best, in any case, the arguments come down to a demand that other countries open up to ‘American’ (i.e., multinational) company and bank ownership of their economies, that is, to a rather pathetic form of economic liberalism. The power of majority rule does not come into play.

2. @Tom S,
Do you have any clue what Russia is like and is becoming? I lived there two years and it was not my favourite place to live overall. All the same, it is not legal there to permanently detain citizens for no reason. Of course, any thug corrupt police state *can* do this, but at least in Russia, unlike here, the State sees no purpose in officially giving itself this authority.
Also, you are not ‘legally’ molested by illegal immigrants at the airport or anywhere else in Russia.
Apparently, people live with too many ‘freedoms and contradictions’.
In terms of what Russia is ‘becoming’, it is a much better and safer place to be than in the 1990s.

The US gained that right to remake the World by winning the Cold War. The Spoilers of war belong to the victorious side. US has the right to remake The world through the ideological democratization & globalization of the World. If US lost that Cold War Soviet Union would be communizing the World. But thank god the USSR lost the Cold War and its quest for domination of the World.

No, instead they make up reasons to permanently detain opposition figures and/or critics, and ram it through a court. Failing that, “interested parties” can just arrange to kill them. Or they can refuse to permit them to run for office. I’ll grant that Putin is intelligent and subtle about setting up a police state in Russia’s current political context.

Can’t say I’ve ever been molested by illegal immigrants at airports or anywhere else. What on earth are you talking about?

“Those employees [in Egypt] work for the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, two democracy-building groups with close ties to United States Congressional leaders that have come under a criminal investigation by the Egyptian authorities into allegations that they violated rules on the foreign funding of nonprofit groups. ”

Can someone please tell me what in God’s name the “International Republican Institute” and “National Democratic Institute” think they’re doing interfering in the elections of a foreign state? Where do these people get their money? I hope it isn’t from US taxpayers. We’re having a hard enough time getting rid of these two corrupt, incompetent parties here at home without having them try to clone themselves overseas.